The Thanksgiving Niche Blueprint

Americans spend over $400 million on Thanksgiving (and that was in 2011 so we can expect it to increase with each passing year).

What people buy isn’t just a big turkey but a variety of items from party supplies, bbq equipment, travel, pumpkins, and much more.

Thanksgiving lands on Thursday, November 28^th which gives us plenty of time to begin building a niche website around the holiday and begin promoting affiliate products.

The following is quick guide and overview to building a Thanksgiving niche website.

Step 1: The Thanksgiving Site Setup

Setting up the niche site follows the same process as you would any other.

There’s the domain, hosting, site theme, structure, and launch.

I won’t get into the specific tutorials for each (we already have guides on site building) but, instead, I want you to focus on theming the building process around Thanksgiving to give it an appropriate look and feel for the Holiday.

Domain

Since you’re building a niche website around a Holiday it’s probably best to keep it sounding as if it would fit right in there (building association).

Rattling off a few domain name ideas – see if you can snag your own that sound like:

GobbleTime.com
PlentyofLeftovers.com
CelebrateTheHarvest.com

You could go very specific by using keywords in the domain or try to give it a bit of flexibility and fun by using play on words. Personally, I’d go for the latter since you could morph the site into a generic autumn-based niche site when it’s not Thanksgiving.

If you’re getting stumped than use this mega list of terms related to Thanksgiving which should kick start a few ideas for the domain name.

Themes

What you imagine when you hear “Thanksgiving” should give you an inclination of what to seek in a website theme such as rich autumn colors. This ‘feeling’ should also make way to your email campaigns and social media usage to create continuity in your site.

Here are a few theme resources I’ve found:

There are plenty of other great Thanksgiving-related items and resources on the Envato Network (read our review); you’re bound to find stock photos, video, sounds, themes, and more, there.

Structure

The structure is going to be about the same on most of these niche websites.

Home
Food
Party
Gifts
Blog
About

This is just an example.

What I would recommend is to use your main categories of product promotions as part of the main navigation so if you’re doing BBQ equipment then put that front and center.

Within each of these silo pages could be a shopping area, blog post list, or news and social feeds.

Step 2: Thanksgiving Items (and Programs) to Promote

Start off by reading our guide to finding affiliate products that sell, first.

Thanksgiving has many different products and services worthy of promotion. There are also plenty of programs to work with during this time.

The list of products you can promote is very flexible:

Books
Clothing
Candles
CD’s and Movies
Gift cards
Cooking items
Picnic-related items
Flights and accommodation

Take some time to examine what major competitors are doing in terms of product selection and promotion. Replicate parts of their campaigns. Monitor keywords for the niche. Track news items to use as fuel for finding trends.

Need a program to work with?

Food: Omaha Steaks Affiliate Program
Decorations: Terry’s Village Affiliate Program
Travel: Expedia’s Affiliate Network

Don’t forget that Amazon Associates, CJ.com, Walmart, Target, and other major retailers/marketplaces have easy-to-access affiliate programs, too.

Step 3: Content Ideas and Promotional Strategies

Content, for Thanksgiving, will most likely be two different types: tutorials and list posts.

Tutorials will come into play if you want to share cooking ideas and tips
List posts can be used for gift ideas and suggestions

These two are the easiest to create especially if you need to pass them forward to a freelance writer.

Here are a few additional resources for developing content:

Content marketing tips for affiliates that want traffic
Tools to create visual, audio, or video content.
How to create share-worthy content

When you’re ready to begin promoting the website you can fall back on the tried-and-tested methods:

Paid advertising (PPC, CPM, CPA)
Content marketing (guest posting, blog content, news)
Search engine optimization (keyword research, link building)
Social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)

There are plenty of methods to work with albeit paid advertising will allow you to get a jump on traffic generation. If you don’t have a large budget to promote the site than I would suggest relying on SEO, guest posting, and social media marketing.

Conclusion

So, what have we learned about this Thanksgiving holiday niche?

1. People spend a lot of money on food, parties, gifts, and travel.

2. The website is easy to set up especially with Thanksgiving-related themes.

3. Content is easy to create when you use content templates.

4. Promotion is the same as any other website so if you have the experience you’re set.

Besides content, everything should be able to come together in an afternoon if you really put the time and effort into it. Once the site is live just dedicate a block of your schedule to pushing out fresh content and getting it shared.

The last few days, leading up to Thanksgiving should put you into overdrive.

Start promoting like crazy through any means possible. Those last minute purchases will come at a premium due to the timing which means better commissions on your end.

Gobble, Gobble!